I met Nikki at the NY Open, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament I was shooting for the IBJJF a few months ago. In the photo below, she is the one who is standing.

Despite the fact that she was trying to choke someone out when I met her, I knew she would be able to pull off a delicate beauty shot in my studio. I reached out to her a few weeks later and she told me that she had never done any sort of modeling at all. While I enjoy the expediency at which an agency model can complete a shoot, I also enjoy the experience of shooting an inexperienced model who doesn’t have any preconceived notions about what poses work for her and what poses don’t work.

I expected that she’s be a bit nervous coming into the shoot, but I knew the atmosphere in my studio -(non stop videos courtesy of Vevo on Apple TV), and the team I work with, would erase that pretty quickly.

The goal was to make her hair as large and busy as possible and still convey a feeling of sensuality even though we would only see part of her face. Needless to say, Nikki pulled it off.